Capitalism Will Bring World Peace

For example, when someone says that the "left" wants to destroy 'family values' by allowing for gay marriage they are incorrect: what they mean, if they are to make any sense, is that the "left" wants to reform 'family values' in some way by allowing gay marriage.

Environmental conservation,

racial tolerance,

womens' rights,

social welfare,

the death penalty,

universal health care,

human rights..........

Well if people have better opportunities through having large amounts of money, how can that be equality of opportunity? Unless it means as you say, that someone with however much money and status should be left alone to do as they please, whether from state or others. Do you really have that much faith in leaving the rich and powerful to do as they please?

Equality of opportunity being defined as we should all be able to take whatever opportunities are open to us, irrespective of our wealth and status! With all due respect emperor nero, that isn't what most people would say equality of opportunity means. Inequality of wealth and status being recognised as inequality of opportunity, unless there is state intervention.

eg private education. It is only open to those who can afford it. The state intervenes through taxes to create state education, which is supposed to give equal opportunity to everyone, but in fact fails because we know that exclusive private schools have all kinds of advantages.

But as i have written earlier, even equality of opportunity in the usual sense does not stop individuals gaining wealth and status over others..... which leads to inequality.

For me 'equality of opportunity' means state provision of basic services and non discriminatory laws, but it is dressed up as something else altogether. Something mythical like a meritocrosy. We know from common sense that money can buy better education and health and career prospects, and we know that money can buy you a good lawyer and that status can significantly help get you off the hook.

I find it curious that you say that. Since the left always claim they are abolishing the bigoted rules of the religious right on this issue.
But you admit that it's really about redefining morality to fit their opinion.

I guess. But that's an issue of the super right too. Corporatists.

Racism is a moral rule, right?

Keeping women in the kitchen is too.

Abolishing self-reliance.

That's the hallmark of abolishing a moral rule: Criminals get punished, an eye for an eye, no, let's have compassion.

Part of social welfare.

That's an issue of the left now?

The great thing about my hypothetical free market, meaning one where the government doesn't put up artificial barriers and mandates special privileges, is that the poor are eager to be successful while the rich are lazy and put in less effort.
Its the great equalizer, that we forgo because we allow the government to give benefits to the rich that let them keep their privilege. And then we want the government to give stuff to the poor to balance it out. It spirals itself into more and more government intrusion. Instead of this class warfare, I wish we would be more libertarian.

Basic public health measures that are already in place in this country are aspects of universal health care, but no one would call tuberculosis control or public sanitation "social welfare" -- except maybe a libertarian who couldn't care less if tuberculosis is rampant until he catches it.

As with many libertarian positions, it's not that the libertarian "couldn't care less" about social problems. It's just that he probably thinks these problems, in many cases, could be better solved by private businesses than by excessive government intervention.

do you seriously believe that lazyness due to wealth will make them circulate back down to be replaced by someone coming up? And this will all churn nicely and from the bottom to the top in waves of change?

........... the free market gives benefit to the rich not just the government. Lazy or otherwise.

NRA-types are often conservationists because they like hunting. Big deal -- it's convergent evolution. They come to the same position as tree huggers but for different reasons.

You asked for issues, not rules.

Protection of racial minorities against hate crimes, equal access of minorities to education, jobs, and voting are not issues that the right tends to champion -- and these are positions meant to codify and uphold morals.

It is what -- a moral? Yeah, a crappy one. Morals can be weighed against one another, and the liberal moral of self-determination by women is meant to replace a crappy moral (women should be subordinated) with a good moral (women should be self-determined).

Protecting against social neglect and predators.

No, the liberal standpoint is that the death penalty is immoral because it is arbitrarily and inconsistently applied, it's irrevocable, and it's cruel. All of these are affirmative moral positions.

That depends on the economic model of it. The goal that everyone should have access to health care is not a social welfare position. Basic public health measures that are already in place in this country are aspects of universal health care, but no one would call tuberculosis control or public sanitation "social welfare" -- except maybe a libertarian who couldn't care less if tuberculosis is rampant until he catches it.

You contended that liberal issues all seek to destroy morals. Liberal positions on human rights, such as the issues espoused by Amnesty International, Doctors Without Borders, the International Criminal Court, and UNICEF are without fail promoting certain moral standards, not seeking to eliminate them.

Again, these are not a pure left vs right or moral vs amoral question. I believe that libertarians have very strong moral positions. I also have very strong moral positions. We're both moral. I just like my morals better.

More money isn't better opportunity, that's better outcome. What I decry is equating opportunity and outcome. Sure, more money also means more opportunity for you and your children. But so does being more intelligent. Is the government supposed to do forced lobotomies now? :sarcastic:
Equality of opportunity means equal treatment by others. And yes, in a (hypothetical) free market I am fine with letting the rich and powerful to do as they please. Since they aren't allowed to do anything that effects my opportunity.

The great thing about my hypothetical free market, meaning one where the government doesn't put up artificial barriers and mandates special privileges, is that the poor are eager to be successful while the rich are lazy and put in less effort.
Its the great equalizer, that we forgo because we allow the government to give benefits to the rich that let them keep their privilege. And then we want the government to give stuff to the poor to balance it out. It spirals itself into more and more government intrusion. Instead of this class warfare, I wish we would be more libertarian.

Free market capitalism is not a philosophical statement, it is a way of coexisting within an existing system . It has no rules, no moral values. If it does not give guidance, it makes its own rules and can degenerate through lack of moral form. Many systems of rule abide by this simple need of exchange of goods, in a safe and free manner. If the society that it supported had a moral standing, then it was maintained. Without this moral attitude the strongest would just take advantage of the weak.

There are many values that can promote peace; some such values are promoted by degree under capitalism, others stifled by degree.

But the crux of the problem is that whenever desire is unlimited, peace will be impossible to sustain for any period of time. Peace is not something that can be imposed by any economic system; peace is something that must come from the moral agents involved. Peace can be had under any system, and peace can be impossible under any system. It's up to the people, not the rules or lack of rules of exchange.

This line of reasoning seems to be a bit off. Are you saying that lack of success of an individual, relative to the society, is solely due to a failure by said individual? Surely individuals are beyond blame for certain things that are dictated to them by their situation. They are not at fault for being born black in a society dominated by whites...they are not at fault for being born poor in a relatively wealthy society...they are not at fault for being born into a broken home.

What you are saying about socialism is similar to what Marx said about capitalism...that capitalism simply turns the individual into a consumer/producer, which is dehumanizing and objectifying. Where the only value we place on an individual is the amount of goods and services he produces, and the amount of money he spends...that is an issue. Though I think this problem runs deeper than an economic system, and can happen under any. Probably more likely to happen under capitalism though...

I'm sorry if this has already been discussed (it's a long thread), but rich and powerful people will naturally effect your opportunities in a pure capatalist society. Economies of scale and increased market share will create barriers to entry. The end result is no different to government intervention.

Natural monopolies are usually too large to fail. So no amount of eagerness of the poor will cause large firms to collapse. And even if they do, it will take so long that generations will be skipped in between who will not see the benefits.

Or have I misunderstood what a hypothetical free market is? Meaning how would monopolies be prevented in your hypothetical free market?

But how could that be done other than by either granting special legal privilages to those born unlucky and/or impose legal penalties on those born lucky? Welfare, affirmative action, etc. How can it be innapropriate to not act to right what we might call a 'natural' (of fate, God, whatever your persuation) injustice, but appropriate to enforce a very tangible, legal injustice in response? I think this only makes sense if you equate justice with equality, in an absolute sense; by that logic its alright to lower some and raise others, thereby treating them differently, in order to arrive at something nearer perfect equality in a material sense. I strongly disagree with this logic. For me, justice is equality before the law: i.e. to be treated the same by the state/society. 'Social justice' is by my definition innately unjust.

Well, I would say it's appropriate in many cases, because it is, in fact, not usually a "natural" injustice as you call it. The disadvantaged minority in this country is partly, maybe mostly, hindered by a society that has, for much of its history, deprived minority groups of equal rights under the law. When these groups have been prevented from voting, obtaining employment, and more, they were historically underrepresented, oppressed, and, contrary to the majority, hindered, or prevented from obtaining deserving salaries and net worth to pass on to their children. This was an injustice not of God (or some other mystical force), but of an intolerant society of men...

And so, with this realization that many of these people have been victims of a societal injustice, not a 'natural' one, there should be some type of correction. A free-market, capitalist economy does not exclude the idea of 'social welfare', in fact, it should encourage it. In the early days of this country, many of the wealthiest 'capitalists' donated enormous sums of their money to public causes.

I don't support programs like welfare or affirmative action to right any historical injustices in our society, so I don't need to defend these programs; I never said we need them. I don't think we should be dumping money into these bureaucratic organizations that claim to help the poor, when the money can obviously be put to better use. The old department of housing, education, and welfare, admitted to losing billions of dollars due to waste, fraud, and corruption. Stigler of U. Chicago did calculations that we could devote the same amount of funds spent on this organization to raising something like the lower 20% of income earners to 'middle class'. And affirmative action done with race in mind, is blind to the real underlying problem, which is poverty (poverty that may have arguably been created by historic racial discrimination, but still, is simply poverty, and should be viewed and corrected as such).

If you still want to accept that many people are just put into bad positions thanks to God, or random chance, which certainly sometimes they are, then you should consider the neighborhood effects of having a certain percentage of your society existing in poverty.

Once oppressed minority groups in the U.S. were granted equality before the law, any remaining inequality or injustices are either 1) a result of failure to enforce the law equally, the solution to which is not changing the law to give the minority groups special privlages above others, but rather to focus on enforcing the law better; or 2) the result of lingering prejudices amoungst the people, e.g. employers, which is a natural injustice in the sense that it is not and ought not be illegal to be a racist. I should be allowed to not hire someone because he's black just like I should be allowed to not hire someone because I think they smell funny, or I don't like their taste in shoes, or they have the same name as me and I'm annoyed by that, etc. That is a private matter. If the law is applied equally, then there is no societal injustice.

If you mean that one segment of society should be penalized and/or denied privilages granted to the another segment of society becuase their ancestors harmed the ancestors of the other segment, that is a great injustice. the basis of civil law is that one is responsible for one's actions and only one's actions, not for one's relatives', or ancestors', or racial/ethnic group's actions.

As for social welfare, if you mean by that voluntary donations to charitable causes, that's wonderful and something everyone of means should be encouraged to do; but that is competely different from anything done by the state, as the state takes those actions using resources which it's simply seized by brute force from individuals.

And who's fault is that? The people half-way across the country who have never met or spoken a word to the people in the poor neighborhood? No, and neither is it the fault of those people. They were born into that unfortunate situation, just as some individual person might be born with some innate disability. There is not always someone to blame.

I'm glad to see we agree that state-operated social programs are no solution, even if you think it's the responsibility of society to offer a solution. There arte all sorts of problems though with having a garanteed minimum income. Reality doesn't care about what we say 'ought to be.' If the economy can only offer so much employment and wages at a given time, mandating that some people receive more in wages, or get a job when they didn't have one before, is simply taking that job or those wages from someone else. And NOT the rich. The rich design the system and more or less avoid paying their share. The rich use the poor as a bludeon against the middle class, their rivals. Lasting changes in the order of society never come form the poor, they always come from the middle class. when a society reaches a point where there is no middle class, but only a tiny oligarchy and vast sea of poor, the possibility for reform is gone, and that ruling class is garanteed to stay in power.

I agree. And, maybe I'm alone in this opinion, but peace is not always the highest priority or an end unto itself. In the words of Nero's contemporary () the divine Tacitus, 'A bad peace is worse than war.' For example, humanity could achieve permanent peace (in the sense that there would be no more inter-state violence) if it acquiesces to domination by a global, collectivist, totalitarian state. Awesome? I think not. Peace in general simply means the imposition of order upon chaos; we need to ask what order.

No problem, chime in whenever you want.
A monopoly itself is not a bad thing. Just like a monarchy isn't a bad thing if the king is a good guy. A monopoly will in reality almost always exploit it's situation. For example with higher prices. In a hypothetical free market a competitor will - sort off per definition - be able to offer a better deal to the customer. Since the company with the monopoly demands more for the service than supply and demand dictates. Thus the new company will take over business from the company with a monopoly. Monopolies exist in the unfree market because of unfair barriers in the market. I understand it is a little more complicated in real life to compete with a monopoly though.

Either the role of the state is to ensure the general welfare (utilitarianism when taken to its logical conclusion) or the role of the state is to protect individuals from other individuals: i.e. to maintain a state monopoly on violence, and to provide a standard and a mechanism for the abitration of disagreements on civil matters. In other words, social justice or, if I can use the phrase, 'Hammurabian' justice. The two cannot co-exist without contradiction so long as a social injustice can only be remedied by the state which must, for that purpose, usurp the resources of other members of society.

In the words of Nero's contemporary () the divine Tacitus, 'A bad peace is worse than war.'

You cannot enter the market. This has nothing to do with government intervention, it is simply a fact of capatalism/free market system.

Those with most money can afford the best means to influence others.

Why not?

I'm not sure what you're getting at. There shouldn't be any rich people?

That great Tacitus line contains the mistake. If it is a "bad peace" then it is not peace at all. Because inter-state violence is not the only sort of violence.

Peace is the absence of hostility.

Well, this seems to be a false dichotomy here. The state does not necessarily have to serve one role or another. It is not, and never has been, a perfect system, yet groups of people continue to form states, because they want protection from others, and, I think, also because they believe that the provisions of the state lead to increased welfare for all involved. The state is ultimately created and supported by the people, and there is an understanding that certain individual freedoms will need to yield to state organization.

A system it seems you are speaking of is more along the lines of an individualist anarchist society, with no central control to speak of. The state, always, no matter the economic system, will at times contradict itself, put its own general welfare over the protection of individual freedom, and will be imperfect. Now perhaps you are arguing against the formation of a state, and this is fine, but I don't think the type of system you speak of can coexist with any form of 'state', as we know it.